![]() ![]() There’s action, violence, political intrigue, vampires/gods/primals/shapeshifters, horrifying snake-filled zombies, and an Amarantha-esque queen to keep the action moving. The six-book series (four are presently out) builds in sexual content, and in the third book, readers finally get a scene that has been set up since book one. The series' female protagonist, Poppy, is introduced at the start of the series as “The Maiden” but becomes anything but by the final of book one. ![]() It’s as if “Under the Mountain Rhys” morphed into a Vlad-the-Impaler type vampire/god with a dark sense of humor and fetish for women wielding swords, but also extremely compassionate - fiction men are wild like that. He’s twisted in the most deliciously depraved ways. If you’re looking for a male love interest that rivals Rhysand in debauchery, then enter Hawke. From Blood and Ash (FBAA) is one of the top recommended series to overcome your ACOTAR hangover - and for good reason. ![]()
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![]() His children and grandchildren are throwing him a surprise party. ![]() The occasion of Centerburg Tales is the 75th birthday of Grandpa Carson (Joe Ponazecki), whose wife, the beloved Grandma Ruthy, recently died. I left the theater after the opening night performance thinking about all the intended themes and more, but I wasn't quite sure what the play was saying about them. In this production, it is about 75 percent successful. The extent that Centerburg Tales succeeds in getting these large ideas across is the ultimate measure of its success. ![]() Booker and Rodgers (who collaborated on the playwright's Lost Electra last year at the Asolo) also want to explore themes such as imagination and the uses of storytelling, the loosening of family ties in a transient society and the impact of technology on American life. Rodgers' adaptation from Robert McCloskey's books of stories for young people about the small-town Ohio of his childhood, Homer Price and Centerburg Tales.Īs staged by director Margaret Booker, the play is not just colorful and fun, although its funky high spirits generate plenty of laughs. Of course it needs work, but the shape of something special is clearly visible in Bruce E. Rarely is a play perfectly presented in its first production.Ĭenterburg Tales, now debuting at the Asolo Theater, has a bright future. Ithink perhaps the highest praise for the premiere of a play is not that it is great right now, but that it has a bright future. ![]() The play shows promise in its debut run at the Asolo. ![]() ![]() ![]() First Republic, which is bigger than either SVB or Signature Bank, would be the second largest. The failure of Washington Mutual in 2008 was the nation’s largest bank failure ever. Notably, JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns for a fraction of its earlier value in March of 2008, and then in September bought savings and loan Washington Mutual, soon after Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch. ![]() If there is a buyer for First Republic, the FDIC would likely be stuck with some money-losing assets, as was the case after it found buyers for the viable portions of SVB and Signature after it took control of those banks.Ī kind of shotgun marriage, arranged by regulators who didn’t want a significant bank to end up in the hands of the FDIC before it was sold, occurred several times during the financial crisis of 2008 that sparked the Great Recession. ![]() “We are engaged in discussions with multiple parties about our strategic options while continuing to serve our clients,” First Republic said in a statement Friday night. JPMorgan did not respond to requests for comment. ![]() The Wall Street Journal previously reported that JPMorgan Chase and PNC Financial are among the big banks bidding on First Republic in a potential deal that would follow an FDIC seizure of the troubled regional bank. ![]() ![]() In fear of becoming "a mere weed and weakling and kick-bag," Hitchens confronted his chief tormenter and stood up for himself, telling the boy, "You are a liar, a bully, a coward, and a thief." Hitchens's rhetoric at that age was sufficiently forceful to cause the bully to retreat. Despite his family’s modest income, his mother insisted on cobbling together the money needed to send her son to boarding school: "If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it." It was in boarding school that Hitchens discovered a valuable life lesson: "words could function as weapons." A relatively small boy, classmates regularly bullied the adolescent Hitchens. ![]() ![]() Born in Portsmouth, England in 1949, Hitchens belonged to a family of Royal Navy veterans. The book received critical acclaim and earned a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award. ![]() In his memoir, Hitch-22 (2010), English-American author and journalist Christopher Hitchens chronicles both the personal and political arcs of his life as he grows into his stature as a public intellectual and avowed atheist, while negotiating his positions in respect to the American left. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is probably the specific intention of the author by bringing us into the petty and petulant mind of the fane’s son, Mawyndulë – so job well done, I guess. However, if you are faced with a character you simply do not like, no length of time is the right amount of time. ![]() Sullivan has a gift for being able to keep you in a single character's’ point of view for just the right amount of time, before moving you along the chain. The characters are the same, which allows us to not only experience the growth and exploration of the first book’s lead characters, but we are also now able to step into the minds of a few characters who had been smaller in stature in the first book. ![]() The second book in Sullivan’s The Legends of the First Empire series, Age of Swords follows on quite quickly after the series’ first book, Age of Myth. I received Age of Swords a little later, for one reason or another, but when it finally arrived on my doorstep I was eager to dive right in. While spots at the top of my ‘list’ are hard to secure, Sullivan’s ability to craft an engaging and captivating fantasy world surpasses most any other fantasy author out there, and puts him alongside names like Sanderson and Jordan. I think it is probably safe to say at this point that Michael J. ![]() ![]() Then I checked the "carton packing list" and noticed " Gilmore Girls - Premier Bookmark" in the description. My birthday isn't until September, so it wasn't a gift from someone. A few days later, I received a UPS packaging containing a Sunsets 2023 mini-calendar from Trends International. They refunded me in full via PayPal and said they were sending me the Gilmore Girls bookmark for free. The Buffy bookmark was discontinued (though I've seen it for sale on eBay) for reasons not provided. I had forgotten about the bookmarks until the tail-end of July and contacted Trends's customer support. ![]() ![]() ![]() As many of you already know, my grandmother died from COVID-19 complications on January 29th, which threw my life off balance. The bookmarks were supposed to ship in March. In January, I had preordered two bookmarks ( Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) from Trends International. ![]() |